Ride This Chariot Down
by solysal
Summary: This is not his best moment. Ryuji watches his high school gym teacher stalk towards him in a pink speedo and revises. Life is not his best moment. Or: Sakamoto Ryuji breaks his leg, fall in love, and saves the world.


When he breaks his leg, it's like an entire world winking out of existence.

Ryuji's a pretty straightforward person. He doesn't waste a lot of headspace thinking about, like, the greater edges of society-not because he doesn't care or anything. It's just big. A hell of a lot bigger than him. Besides, he's got other things on his plate.

So: he's fast. Fast enough to lock down a spot on the track team. Fast enough that his coach beelines up to his mom at one of their meets and talks about things like scholarships and recruiters and universities. Fast enough that his mom smiles the whole subway ride home, like the day they finished moving out of his dad's apartment and she swore that things were going to be _better_. The track team's not half bad, either. Nakaoka's kind of a stick in the mud, and Takeshi's dreams of going pro are a pipe dream at best, but they're the kind of guys Ryuji can go all out with at practice and chow down with afterward. It's nice. Real nice.

Then Kamoshida happens.

The thing about a place to belong, Ryuji realizes, is that you don't realize how important it is until it's gone.

...

"What the hell is going on?" Ryuji yells. He's not sure he wants an answer.

He's in a cell with a bunch of guards and the resident mysterious transfer student who woke up just in time to witness Ryuji get the living shit kicked out of him. The guards cage Ryuji up against a wall, and even if he could shake them off, there's no way he's kicking down the door with the help of Mr. Barely Conscious in the corner.

This is not his best moment. Ryuji watches his high school gym teacher stalk towards him in a pink speedo and revises. Life is not his best moment.

"Kamoshida?"

This whole situation was all kinds of fucked up even before Kamoshida showed up in the equivalent of his birthday suit and a cape, but Ryuji can't shut out the hot, sinking feeling that things are about to turn so much worse. It makes sense-the same as his leg, the same as his spot on the track team. Kamoshida never struck him as the type to leave a job half done. Ryuji figures the least he can do is keep his mess to himself.

He gives the transfer student a once over while Kamoshida monologues about castles and slaves and a bunch of other stuff that makes Ryuji never want to try drugs ever. The kid's all gangly legs and noodle arms and would probably lose a fight with an athletic middle schooler. None of that matters, though, because Kamoshida left the door open on his way in.

"Get out of here!" Ryuji shouts.

The problem is, the transfer student doesn't run. Things get really weird from there.

...

The past few weeks, Ryuji's been dreaming of the sea.

He's in the middle of a hurricane, and he is so goddamn small. Salt chokes up the air, and lightning cracks clouds out of the sky, and, okay, the good news is he's on a boat, but the bad news is the boat's tipping over any second. Ryuji's never lost any sleep over sinking ships before, but he works out pretty quickly that drowning is his least favorite way to go.

He realizes he has a plus one after he finishes checking for lifeboats or preservers or _anything that floats_ and before he wonders how this glorified piece of wood sidled on past every maritime regulation ever. The company doesn't do shit to change either a) the height of the waves or b) the distance to shore, so Ryuji takes a hard pass on this little bonding exercise.

The other guy doesn't get the memo. He stalks through the rain and the wind and the foam until Ryuji can't use any of them as an excuse for ignoring the ever-living fuck out of his existence. He's dressed like some kind of pirate-black hat, eyepatch, peg leg (and isn't that a nice touch)-which, fine, not something Ryuji was expecting, but fairly reasonable given the circumstances. Oh, also, his face is a _skull_. Ryuji can't rig together a good explanation for that, but his general sense that he's about to die ramps up to eleven.

"Are you afraid?" the skeleton greets, as if he isn't, you know, a skeleton. "When the odds are against you, do you think your only choice is to lose?"

He stares meaningfully at Ryuji, which, in reality, translates to him angling his eye socket in Ryuji's direction. When all Ryuji does is stare back (in his defense, kind of a lot to process, here), the bones that make up the guy's mouth shift and scrape into a bloodless frown.

"I won't wait much longer, boy," the skeleton growls as the waves crash down. "You're not the only current that calls me."

Ryuji wakes up with the memory of the tide in his lungs.

("Why not hoist the flag and wreak havoc?" Captain Kidd aks, much later, in a castle foyer, with Ryuji's friends on the ground in front of him.

Ryuji tastes the ocean on his tongue and thinks, _Yes_.)

...

Takamaki Ann hasn't been Ryuji's friend in a long time.

It's no one's fault, more like different homerooms, back-to-back photoshoots, evening practices. The kind of stuff that piles up little by little until you step into your room one day and wonder why you can't see the floor anymore. He stopped waving at her when he passed her in the hall midway through first year. Not intentionally, just-he reached for the light switch one day, and his nails flicked up against empty space.

She had Suzui, and he had the track team, and, yeah, Kamoshida's an ass, but they both stayed out of his way right up until he chased them off the road. The school rumor mill had always been a game of two truths and a lie, so when some guy in the cafeteria blabbed on about _didn't you see Takamaki in Kamoshida's car the other day_ , Ryuji just kicked the table and stabbed a little too hard at his rice. (Her hands balled into fists when he limped up to the school gate in crutches.)

She's his friend now, though, and Ryuji's still kind of waking up to what that means.

For starters, he can't shrug her off when she corners him in the middle of Shibuya Plaza and waves a soda bottle in his face. He shoots a pleading glance at the Hachi statue over her shoulder, but Hachi's too busy either being dead or enjoying the show to lend a hand. Ryuji snatches the bottle and scans it critically. He doesn't even like Ramune.

"Come on, Ryuji!" Ann whines, somehow cutting through the noise of three different subway lines and a million street vendors. "You've been sulking the whole day! At least tell me what's bothering you."

Ryuji palms the phone in his pocket and discards the idea of hailing Akira to defuse Ann's surprise interrogation huddle. The sun is out on a _Saturday_ in _Shibuya_. Even if Ryuji does manage to get a text out without Ann noticing, the cavalry's not riding in for another thirty minutes at best. Besides, it's not like he can hide anything from her for long. "It's just some drama with the track team," he concedes. "It won't affect the Phantom Thieves, promise."

Ann cocks her head to the side like a really tall poodle. Ryuji values his organs too much to actually mention it. "You're pretty invested for someone who's not on the team."

He cringes and modifies his original eval to a really tall, really ruthless poodle. He doesn't know how to convince her that, once upon a time, the track team was _his_ team, and, once upon a time, that used to mean something. (Yesterday, his mom hugged his shoulders and sighed that old habits have a tendency to screw you over.) "Hey, they're good guys. They just need some help."

Ann taps her soda bottle against her lips. "You're a lot more forgiving than I am."

Ryuji rolls his eyes. If he had to give a bullet point summary of Ann, it would read:  
\- drop-dead gorgeous (see: obviously)  
\- kind (see: Suzui Shiho, the Phantom Thieves, etc)  
\- savage (see: Kamoshida, "there are fates worse than death," red leather)

What he tells her is, "Yeah, that's not exactly a high standard."

"Just make sure you're getting involved for the right reasons," she breezes on, as if he didn't just call her the moral equivalent of a toadstool. "You guys may not even want the same things anymore."

Ryuji knows, intellectually, that you can't lose a conversation, but he's losing pretty bad right now. He blinks at her shoes and tries not to dwell on all the things he missed out on when their frequencies went out of sync. For her part, Ann just sips her soda like she isn't dropping a consecutive hit list of relationship advice.

"Yeah, I kinda got that when Nakoaka brought up my dad," he replies.

Her soda bottle clatters to the ground. "HE DID WHAT?"

Ryuji trips over a lumpy, lowkey panic, like someone set his therapist's office on fire midway through his regularly scheduled appointment. "Just some shit about how I wasn't any different than my dad. Look it's fine-"

She draws herself up to her full height, and Ryuji's reminded of all the times she flogged a Shadow to an inch of its life, the time she had a sword in her hands and Kamoshida on his knees. Her fingers bend, ghosting for the handle of her whip. "Where are they-those pigs-"

"Hey!" he snaps, waving his arms back and forth. Morgana would call him an overgrown pigeon. An overgrown pigeon stuck on damage control and failing. "Calm down! I'm over it, okay?"

She wheels around to face him fully, leaning in until Ryuji has to quash the urge to step back. She searches his face for one long minute after another, like she's trying to pick a constellation out of the stars. Suddenly-unmistakably-Ryuji feels more important than he ever has in his life. He thinks: Takamaki Ann is a babe to the point where a talking cat has a crush on her, but this is something else. This is her riding in an ambulance with her best friend when none of the teachers would. This is her flexing for battle before she even knew what a Persona was.

"You are nothing like your father, Ryuji, " she says, each word sharp and precise.

"Okay." He nods, not quite sure he registers his hands tug-tug-tugging at the sleeves of his jacket. He swallows the tightness in his throat. "I hear you."

Ann gives him one of those cheesy, too-big grins, then ropes her elbow around his and drags him off to crepes. Ryuji makes a point to complain the whole way. She laughs and says she'll believe him when he stops smiling.

...

Man, his leg always gives out at the worst times.

He goes down like a goddamn anchor, scrapes on his shins, dirt in his teeth-fucking perfect. He props himself up on his stomach and glares back at his leg like he just caught his least favorite child stealing from his wallet _again_. He twists around in time to make out the flap of Akira's coat-and if this falls apart because of-

"Wow, wait, that's my ass, dude-" Ryuji squawks before his mind latches onto a couple of key facts. One, he's not on the ground anymore. Two, he's catching up to the rest of the group-in a lurching kind of way that makes those shaky-cam horror movies seem like a cakewalk-but, you know, catching up nonetheless. Three, he counts one arm under his knees, another behind his back, and, okay, he definitely could have lived his whole life without experiencing a bridal carry firsthand, but now that he has, he wants to submit the entire concept for a safety inspection. He grabs instinctively for-really slender shoulders? He looks over and gets-a mouthful of brown hair? "Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

"Please stop squirming, Skull," Makoto warns, just as cool and composed as if she were sitting next to him on the subway and not effectively fleeing the scene of a crime with a sixty-one kilogram barbell. "I'm going to fall if you keep moving."

"Why are you carrying me?" he shrieks, although, to his credit, he manages to stay pretty still.

"You fell," she informs him, like he somehow wasn't there for that part. She rounds a corner and adjusts her grip so that the torque of their combined weight slingshots them forward instead of rightfully bowling them over-which is a pretty cool trick, all things considered.

"That's a pretty cool trick," Ryuji says, because what else _can_ he say?

"Aikido's all about redirecting your opponent's momentum. This is basic stuff," she grunts, hefting him up for a stronger hold. "Look! Joker found a safe room!"

Ann holds the door open until they dash through. Ryuji hears her slam it shut as Makoto dumps him on the table.

"Oh my god," Ryuji moans. "I'm never living this down, am I?"

Ann snaps a jab across the top of his head. "Oh grow up! At least you'll be around to live it down!"

"Skull, you absconded from hell in the arms of a vengeful queen!" Yusuke spreads his arms like he's lecturing to a packed stadium and not five people. "If anything, I'm jealous!"

"You know, the power of cognition is stronger here in the Metaverse," Makoto chimes in, clearly an active participant in a completely different conversation. "If I had to guess, I was able to carry you because I thought I could."

Akira trades a shrug with Morgana and says something along the lines of, "Sweet pun, Fox," which is about as helpful as he ever is in social situations.

Ryuji stakes out a corner to stretch his leg and mumbles to himself that Makoto was terrifying enough before she started gunning around on a motorcycle and saving his ass, thank you very much.

...

Ryuji is holding a painting in his hands and has absolutely no idea what to say.

"Um. What," he manages, finally.

Yusuke peers over the cafe booth, bouncing from one foot to the other like Morgana when he stumbled on the Boss's coffee stash. "Do you not see the resemblance?"

"Yeah, no, the resemblance is pretty fucking clear. I-wait, is she carrying me?"

"It's an homage to two utterly transcendent moments in my life," Yusuke explains, in the same _I-am-an-artist_ voice that seven out of eight people rate over-dramatic and, truthfully, kind of douchey. The rest of the Phantom Thieves have all sat down and discussed it, but not even Futaba has the heart to tell Yusuke otherwise. "The first is our daring escape from certain demise. The second is when I laid eyes on the full glory of the Pieta in Saint Peter's Basilica."

"Why is Makoto in a full suit of armor? Why am I naked?" Ryuji asks, taking care that his vicious pointing doesn't actually lead to any contact between his fingers and the swirling brushwork. He scowls at the scene as he lifts it up. On closer inspection, there's at least some kind of cloth drawn over painting-Ryuji's, ah, area, but like, this is so not the kind of thing he can hang up in his apartment. Shit, scratch that-his mom would love it. "I can never let her see this," he mutters, then realizes, belatedly, that Yusuke never stopped talking.

"-combines the gentle grace of the Virgin Mary with the harsh ferocity of medieval warfare! It is only by engaging these ancient philosophical dialogues that my work can rise to the level of true art!"

Ryuji understood absolutely none of that, but what he does understand is that Yusuke probably skipped who knows how many meals while he was pouring his heart and soul into a gift for his friend whose artistic sensibilities include a shirt that reads " _Silent Fucker_." No one's ever, like, _made_ anything for Ryuji before, and that, at least, he can appreciate. "You know what, forget I asked. Thanks, man. I think."

Yusuke's smile is so radiant Ryuji feels like he's squinting at the sun. "You're welcome."

Ryuji wraps the painting carefully in the tarp Yusuke gives him and spends the rest of the evening googling the ideal conditions for storing canvas media because, yeah, Yusuke occasionally says the kind of things that make sneaking into cognitive palaces and stealing hearts seem normal, but he's also _talented as fuck_ , and Ryuji's damn well telling every pretentious asshat he runs into that he has an original Kitagawa when the rest of the world wakes up to the fact that the next Picasso's been living in Tokyo all along.

Also, you know, it's a nice painting.

...

Ryuji: you need to stop

Futaba: u mad bro?

Ryuji: i haven't even told you what to stop

Futaba: concept: u, getting to the point

Ryuji: hi concept, i'm dad

Futaba: OH MY GOD THATS NOT HOW IT WORKS

Ryuji: whatever you're not the only person on the internet B-)

Futaba: (ง'̀-'́)ง

Ryuji: anyway, the point is

Futaba: the internet is a series of tubes

Ryuji: can you quit calling me out on the group chat

Futaba: my desires are...unconventional

Ryuji: if you respond to me with a meme one more time

Ryuji: i'm stealing your figurines and giving them to yusuke

Futaba: u wouldnt

Ryuji: fucking try me :(

Futaba: ughhhhhh but ur such an easy target ≧Д≦

Ryuji: the hell's that supposed to mean?

Futaba: its like ur constantly speaking capslock

Ryuji: i just want to point out that you're the only person who's used capslock this whole conversation

Futaba: thats not what i mean

Futaba: its like…

Ryuji: like?

Futaba: idk learn how to read ppl

Ryuji: i'm pretty sure i've interacted with more actual people in the past week than you have in the past year

Futaba: wow rude （；¬＿¬)

Ryuji: sorry

Futaba: w/e loser

Futaba: i know that im bad w ppl but that doesnt mean i dont know how to read them

Futaba: reading them is a piece of cake

Futaba: dealing with them is the hard part

Ryuji: that's fair i guess

Ryuji: altho you're not bad with people

Ryuji: you get along with us just fine

Futaba: ew dont turn this into a feelings train

Futaba: ...

Futaba: *sigh* fine ok maybe i pick on u bc...like i *know* im bad at this

Futaba: but maybe if i can distract everyone else

Futaba: they won't notice

Futaba: i know i know real mature futaba

Futaba: im working on it

Ryuji: aw shit, was that an emotion :')

Futaba: u were literally in my mind a month ago of course i have emotions

Ryuji: right

Ryuji: we cool?

Futaba: yeah

Futaba: so

Futaba: when are you telling akira you're in love with him

 _Ryuji signed off_

Futaba: (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)

...

So Ryuji's, like, a normal person. Yeah, once upon a time he could run really fast, but all he ever saw that turning into was a little hallway notoriety and a free ride to university. The current Phantom Thieves lineup, on the other hand, includes a model, an art prodigy, a student council president, an internationally renowned hacker, a corporate heiress, a talking cat, and a kid who walked up to the future prime minister and (accidentally) knocked him on his ass.

Which is to say: they were all headed for big things eventually. It's the only reason he can think of that they can sit there calmly and inhale their Leblanc roast as if the Phantom Thieves haven't blown the roof off the collective nation. Ryuji, meanwhile, feels like a kid with his mom's credit card. He's hit the jackpot, and from here on out, things are going to be fucking lit.

In hindsight, he really should have expected that things would go to hell. The rest of his life was kind of a clue.

...

After Okumara dies, it's like plexiglass descends on Haru. The rest of the Phantom Thieves still see her, and she swears she's fine, really, there's no need to worry, but they can all pick out the undercurrent of cold, unyielding grief beneath everything she says. Makoto tells Haru to take every inch of time she needs. She lost her dad, too-loved him, too. (He wonders, sometimes, what that must be like). Ryuji's just glad one of them knows the right thing to say.

He spends the next few days ducking corners and power-walking past the third year classrooms because the only way he can think of to help Haru is to give her space. This works as well as any plan that amounts to you painstakingly avoiding one of your so-called-friends until, on a gloomy Friday of a generally gloomy week, he shoves open the door to the stairwell and the smell of wet soil clocks him straight in the nose. He forgot Haru kept a garden on the roof.

On cue, she spins around, wide-eyed, to face him. "Ryuji?"

"Sorry, my bad!" Ryuji apologizes, already retreating towards the door, "I didn't know you were up here! I'll just head back!"

"Oh, no, please don't do that! It's not like I have a monopoly on the school roof!" she exclaims, unfailingly polite to the Shadows attacking her, to the politician's son blackmailing his way to the company fortune, and now, to the jackass teammate barging in on one of the few moments she has left in the day to breathe.

"Dude, it's fine. Ann's always telling me how noisy I am. Don't let me bother you."

"I actually wouldn't mind the noise. Or the company." She rocks back and forth on her heels, then lowers herself to the flower bed. She sounds like she means it, but she's so overly earnest about everything that it's hard for Ryuji to believe that with any kind of certainty.

"If you say so." He waffles between loitering near the stairs and wandering behind her to watch her work and, in the end, judges both courses of action incredibly awkward, second only to a) punching himself in the face and b) the current conversation. "Sorry about your Dad," he says, finally.

"Hm?" Her hands stutter to a stop, the soil clinging in bits and pieces under her nails.

"Just, uh," he scuffs his shoe against the ground, drafts a shortlist of how this could possibly get any worse, "I sort of realized I never told you."

"Oh, um," she tips her head in a half-bow. "Thank you."

Ryuji's arms hang heavy and useless at his sides because there's nothing for him to grab onto there-no edge of frustration or bitterness or self-righteous fury-just him and Haru alone on the roof with the hole her father left behind. The silence swells and swells, like a balloon ready to pop. "You know, I didn't really like my dad," he blurts out, before the quiet wrings him dry. He wants to take it back immediately. "Sorry, that's not something I should-especially-you know."

She smiles and hikes up the sleeves of her sweater, the pale pink wool striking out against the grey sky. "You've said sorry a lot of times, Ryuji. Much more than you need to. I didn't really like my father either." She sets her gardening tools to the side and kneels back on her feet. "If he hadn't been my father, I would have hated him."

Ryuji watches her cup the neck of a flower, and she looks, more than anything, tired. He remembers the first time he said he hated his old man-into his pillow, over and over and over-the only other thing in his head the thready fear that his mom would hear him. Because he was supposed to love his dad, wasn't he? He didn't expect to pick apart the pieces of that again. Not at Shujin Academy, of all the places. Not with Haru Okumura, of all people.

"You know," he starts, then reconsiders. Nothing makes having a shitty dad less shitty-not really. Ryuji rolls the words around his mouth anyway, arranging and rearranging them for all they're worth. "You can still hate him. Even if he was your dad."

"I suppose." Haru tilts her chin up, the line of her back pulling straight. "I suppose there are days that I do. Those days are easier. It's harder when I remember that he was capable of being kind."

Ryuji forgets mostly: his dad, the mornings after his mother's shouts tore at the walls, bringing home pocky and pudding from the convenience store, lifting Ryuji high in the air like they were the kind of family they told everyone else they were. He shakes his head. "That doesn't mean he was a good person."

"That's-" she bats at her eyes with her knuckles, once, twice. "That's true." She grabs the stalk of a blade of grass, yanking until its roots break from the soil. Her laugh is wet and bright. "I loved him, Ryuji. I won't deny that. But I wish-I really wish that wasn't true. That's okay, right?"

Ryuji squats down next to her and bumps his elbow into hers. "Yeah."

They pull weeds until Ryuji finds out that Haru's never had the okonomiyaki from the shop over at Central Street. From that point, the detour he loops them into on the way home is non-negotiable. Stuffing themselves silly probably is, but they do it anyway.

...

Ryuji can't believe he's apologizing to a cat.

"I can't believe I'm apologizing to a cat," he says.

The light catches Akira's glasses in a way that looks vaguely disapproving. He shifts his messenger bag, and Morgana's head pops over the top like an oversized dandelion. "I am not a cat!" he yowls. "How dare you speak to me that way!"

"Pretty sure everyone besides us hears meowing," Ryuji shoots back.

"I knew this was a mistake!" Morgana huffs. "Come on, leader, let's go home. This is a waste of time."

"Fine by me!" Ryuji taunts, sticking his tongue out for emphasis. It's not his most mature moment. Then again, he's not exactly running for top dog in that department when the literal student council president spams their group chat with study reminders every exam week.

Akira pushes up his glasses for added disapproval. Ryuji wishes Akira cared less about his friends' problems.

"Ugh fine!" Ryuji shouts. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"For?" Morgana prompts, because Morgana's an asshole.

"Oh my god," Ryuji groans. "For all the shit I said. You're not useless, and you should know that well enough to not believe people when they say stuff like that!"

"I don't care what other people say," Morgana mumbles, shrinking back into the mouth of the bag. "I care what the Phantom Thieves think. I am the heart of this organization, after all."

Akira inclines his head towards Ryuji. Fortunately, Ryuji knows Akira well enough to realize when he's being prompted.

"Yeah, you really are," Ryuji sighs. He crouches down to Morgana's level. "Look, I shouldn't have said that stuff, okay? I was just pissed off and-"

Akira narrows his eyes.

"-and that's no excuse, I get it, jeez!" Ryuji winces. "It's a bad habit I picked up from-well, a long time ago. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

Morgana ogles him from the depths of the bag. "Well, as long as you remember your place, it should be fine."

Akira looks between Ryuji and Morgana and pumps his fist like he's brokered a fucking peace treaty. Ryuji scratches the back of his head and makes a show of looking the other way. Their leader is _such_ a nerd. Thank god he can cook.

...

It's not like Ryuji's especially happy when Akira announces to the rest of the Phantom Thieves that Akechi Goro's basically a betrayal waiting to happen-but, hey, he fucking told them Mr. Celebrity Detective was bad news. Morgana and Futaba lay out the counterplan-which, in all truth, is pretty freaking sweet-and Ryuji's so jazzed with the thrill of finally being able to do something that he daydreams straight through the part where they have to spend hours and weeks twiddling their fingers pretending like they believe him when Akechi says he has their best interests at heart.

The result of all of that is: Ryuji ends up with a shit ton of time to pick up on little odds and ends. He ambles into Leblanc one day and finds Akechi setting up shop on the corner bar stool, laptop and a bunch of files neatly lined up in front of the coffee machine. The Boss greets Akechi like a regular before another customer calls for a refill and Akechi hunches over the counter like he's scrabbling for a lifeline. Akechi only looks up when Akira sets down a latte, and, just like that, the hard lines on his forehead shift loose.

"Oh, thank you very much," he beams.

Ryuji raises his eyebrows at them from his booth.

Akira walks overs and slides into the opposite seat. "Akechi always orders the same thing," he says, as if that explains everything.

Ryuji starts looking closer after that.

Akechi's uniformly pleasant-knocking knees with Yusuke in Morgana's backseat when they drive through Mementos, arguing with Ann about the best bubble tea in Shinjuku-but there's something plastic about it, like he wandered into the middle of a TV set and the director told him to improvise. Except that's not right-not completely. Akechi's uniformly pleasant as long as Akira's not in the room. The second their fearless leader shows up the conversation flips from wistful to dark to teasing so fast that any normal person would get whiplash. None of it seems to faze Akira, though, which just has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging Akechi to keep going.

Ryuji's never been any good at math, but even he can tell the act doesn't add up. Yeah, fine, Akechi's end goal is to run the Phantom Thieves into the dust, but there's something genuine about the way his shoulders bunch up when they're hashing out the break-in to Sae Nijima's palace. He probes Akira at every turn, pressing and pulling at his ideas like they're playing a really elaborate game of logical Janga. When everyone says their goodbyes, Akechi hangs back as the rest of them file down the stairs. Ryuji pops his head back over the railing, but Akira waves him on ahead like its nothing special.

Nobody else has mentioned it-and why should they, Akechi's literally trying to kill them-but Ryuji has eyes, and he can tell every time Akechi flashes Akira a real smile.

...

Sakamoto Ryuji is in love, and he has _opinions_.

First, everyone needs to keep their hands to themselves. The Phantom Thieves have a personal space problem, and, frankly, it's driving Ryuji up the wall. Ann's the worst offender by far-she loops her arms around him like he's her personal coat hanger-but the others aren't any better. Yusuke catches him by the neck in the middle of battles, Futaba headbutts his shoulder whenever he nods off during their meetings, Akira's a pathological leaner-and that's just the tip of the iceberg. They're supremely chill about it too, like they've always been one big handsy family, _get with the program, Ryuji_. He's trying, honestly, he is, but the last time Makoto caught him by the elbow outside the Student Council Room with some intel about Mementos, he still had to actively make himself say words back instead of just standing there tunnel-visioning like an anemic vampire.

Second, everyone needs to be less good-looking. Way less good-looking. Ryuji copes like a pro because his sexuality's been stuck in overdrive since the last year of middle school, but he's a little distressed that his brain keeps giving enthusiastic thumbs ups to his attraction to every single human member of their team. (Morgana is a notable exception clause because Morgana is a cat. If Morgana ever figures out how to transform into a human, though, all bets are off.) It doesn't help that everyone wanders around the metaverse in outfits that break some very basic pillars of common sense and simultaneously make some very hot people look even hotter. So like-when Haru introduced herself as the beauty thief, Ryuji laughed his ass off, but, at the same time, he didn't disagree.

Third, Akira needs to man up and take some fucking ownership of the mess he's made. Currently, he's leaning over the sunroof of their rental car like some euphorically happy beanpole surrounded by people who would go to hell and back for him because he already did the same for them. He doesn't really seem to care that everyone in the van is in love in some way or the other-with each other, or with him, or both-but maybe juvie has a way of putting things in perspective. So Ryuji says some shit about aesthetics that Yusuke immediately shuts down and thinks fine, maybe he'll never really have words for this place-where the sky is blue and wide, where he has lightning for bones and seawater for blood- but Ryuji'll fight for it with his life.

(What Ryuji settles on, finally, is this: if Yusuke and Akira hauled him into a closet for a makeout session he wouldn't say no.)

...

 **A/N** : Missing scenes with Ryuji because vulgar boys with hearts of gold are my kryptonite and everyone needs more time with Ryuji. Thanks for reading!


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